Building Data

Introduction

You can access Building Data by selecting Edit, Building Data, or by pressing the button on the Toolbar.

Figure 4 Building Data dialog

The Building Data dialog contains information about the building and about the passengers using the elevators.

To speed up your data entry, all Elevate tables are designed to operate like Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

Your selection of Measurement System in Analysis Data will determine whether Elevate asks for data in Metric or U.S. units. Metric units will be assumed for discussion in this chapter.

Floor Name

You must give every floor in the building a unique floor name, entering the floors in sequence.

You can enter the floor names in the table individually. However, we recommend that you use one of the speed-fill functions. Either use the Speed fill table button or

Click on the cell in row 1 under the Floor Name column.

Type in Basement, Ground, or Level 1 depending on how you want to identify the lowest floor in the building.

Keep pressing Enter on the keyboard until the number of floors matches the building being modelled.

With the mouse, click any cell other than the current one to stop the auto-fill.

You could start the auto-fill at another cell, for instance by typing Ground in row 4, having entered the names of four basement floors.

You can insert additional floors at the beginning or middle of the table by highlighting and dragging cells as you would in a spreadsheet.

Floor Population, Area and Area/person

Enter the population of each floor in the table. Or enter the area and area per person allowed. For example, entering 800 m² area and 10 m²/person would be the same as entering a population of 80 people.

The population is used to determine passenger destinations. For example, if the population of floor x is 50 people, and the population of floor y is 100 people, a passenger travelling from floor z is twice as likely to want to travel to floor y as he/she is to floor x. An exception is when Passenger Data is being used in Advanced Mode; in this case, passenger destinations are determined by the destination probabilities which are entered.

The population entered here is also used for some graphs where the results are presented as a percentage of population.

Floor Level and Floor Height

First use the radio buttons to the right of the table to specify whether you want to enter the height of each floor (e.g. 5 m, 3.6 m, 3.6 m.) or the level of each floor (e.g. 0 m, 5 m, 8.6 m, 12.2 m). If you enter floor heights, you don’t need to enter the height of the top floor as car does not travel beyond the floor itself; for this reason, Elevate does not save this data.

You can enter floor levels or heights individually. However, we recommend that you use one of the speed-fill functions. Either use the Speed fill table button or, if entering floor heights:

Enter 3.6 in row 1 of the Floor Height column and press Return.

Click again on the cell in row 1 of the Floor Height column to select it.

Point to the bottom right hand corner of the cell (the pointer will turn into a small cross).

Click and drag the black cross down the table.

Speed fill table

This is normally the fastest way to fill the Building Data table.

The Speed fill table button allows you to select from a number of pre-defined floor name series, then specify the number of floors and floor height (or total travel). The Edit series option allows you to define your own series.

Figure 5 Building Data Speed fill dialog

If you define your own series, and want these series to be available in future documents, please refer to Saving your own default data.

Entrance Floor

You must indicate which levels are entrance floors. Where the analysis type allows for multiple entrance floors, the floors you select here will be available in the Entrance Bias table in Passenger Data.

To do this click on the cell in the entrance floor column against the corresponding floor level.

Lowest first or highest first

You can specify whether you want the floor information to be entered lowest first (e.g. ground, level 1, level 2) or highest first (e.g. level 2, level 1, ground). If you swap between the modes Elevate will adjust the floor names and heights accordingly.

The highest first option is most useful when the floor information has been provided in this way by others in a spreadsheet format. This data can be cut and pasted directly into Elevate.

The speed fill functions in Elevate assume lowest first data.

Absenteeism

The percentage of the total building population that may be absent owing to home working, sickness or holidays and hot desking. These people are excluded from the analysis.

Express zone

Select the lowest floor not served by the elevators, and the highest floor not served by the elevators to specify an express zone.

If your Analysis Type is a Round Trip Time calculation (Up peak, Enhanced up peak, General analysis or Double Deck General analysis), it is important to tell Elevate if you have an Express zone so that the calculation is able to make its best estimate of the average distance between stops. In simulation it is not essential to tell Elevate that there is an express zone provided that passengers are not sent to or from un-served floors. However, for consistency, we suggest that you always specify any Express zone in Building Data. Please see the examples provided.